Oklahoma!: A Celebration Of Rural America

Last night for maybe the fourth time, I immersed myself in Oklahoma!, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical set in the Oklahoma territory as it pushed toward statehood early in the last century.

You come out of Oklahoma! wanting to sing, which to me is the hallmark of a great musical.

For America and perhaps even for agriculture, Oklahoma! also is an important work of art.

Before its debut, Broadway musicals were mostly set in cities, and plots were as thin as wax paper, barely enough to string together a few ditties and at least one lavish production numbers with sequins, glitzy dancing and top hats.

Not to spoil the opening for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but Oklahoma! begins quite simply with a cowboy strolling onto the stage singing perhaps the best-known opening lines in any modern American musical. More on that in a moment.

The musical’s humor still holds up well after 67 years, which explains why it's been revived so many times and why road productions like the one I saw last night still make money.

Unlike most of the musicals Broadway produced up until then, Oklahoma! also had a dark thread woven into it, the sociopathic Jud Fry.

But at its heart, Oklahoma! celebrated rural America, more so than any musical before or since. It tells the story of people who grow food for an evolving nation, sending grain and beef to the far off cities. Nobody in Oklahoma! makes a quick fortune or marries into money.

In the Oklahoma territory of this story, times are certainly changing but values remain constant. Near the end, the cowboy hero, Curly, realizes that he’s about to become a farmer, with the certainty that he will be rubbing blisters on his hands with a plow, not a rope.

Curly and the other characters are laying a foundation, both for themselves and the coming state. Oklahoma!, it’s worth noting, was based on the barely noticed 1931 play, Green Grow The Lilacs, which premiered just 24 years after Oklahoma was admitted to the Union.

Oklahoma!, the musical, broke new ground with its rich plot, its portrait of good versus evil and its focus on common folk far from citified ways. For some historians, Oklahoma! is considered the beginning of modern American musical theater. It’s to contemporary musicals what Huckleberry Finn was to the American novel – the alpha, the beginning.

If you have a favorite musical – regardless of its subject – you can trace its lineage to Oklahoma! and that cowboy stepping onto the stage with a song in his heart.

As for the opening, I read once that Richard Rodgers -- the man who composed the music -- was, himself, a negative person who rarely saw the bright side or dwelt on it when he did. He’d had some personal losses and at least one difficult creative partnership. So it’s all the more remarkable the way his music sparkles so brightly from one generation to the next.

His connection with Hammerstein -- who crafted the words -- had been formed initially to create Oklahoma! after Rodgers ended his long-running partnership with lyricist Lorenz Hart, whose alcoholism pushed them apart.

On the very first song they shaped together, Hammerstein -- the new lyricist -- sent Rodgers the words to the opening number, which began:

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
An' it looks like it's climbin' clear up to the sky.

Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin'
Ev'rything's goin' my way.

That’s what Curly sang as he strode onto the stage, so full of optimism and energy. If you’ve ever seen Oklahoma!, you can’t read those words from Oscar Hammerstein without also hearing the music of Richard Rodgers whispering ever so faintly in your mind.

We should all start our day with such a song in our heart.